GPRTU rejects budget statement

The Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) on Monday requested the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to give figures of tax collection from other transport organisations along with that of the Union to give a true reflection of total revenue collected as daily vehicle income tax.

A letter signed by Mr E. K. Gbedemah, National Chairman of the GPRTU to the IRS and copied to the GNA, said the Union was not the only body that collected the income tax.

The letter was in reaction to portions of the budget that alleged that revenue collected by the GPRTU did not match the estimated revenue. The budget also said the GPRTU was able to collect only 5.6 billion cedis out of the estimated 28 billion cedis projected by the IRS.

The letter rejected the budget statement with reference to the Union's revenue collection saying, "the projected 28 billion cedis was for the year 2002 and not for the previous year."

"If there had been any projection at all, that had never been brought to the notice of the Union," the letter stated. The letter said the PROTOA, Co-operative and the Haulage Association also collected the tax and noted that statistics on vehicular population were not made known to the GPRTU.

"We are therefore, with the firm conviction that if revenue from operations of these other transport organisations had been added to that of the GPRTU, the story would have been different," it added.